Lighthouse

Without wanting to indulge GM and his fantasies, the jet stream does seem to be getting stronger and stronger. The record for a transatlantic NY-London flight has been broken multiple times over the last few years and yesterday several aircraft posted a sub 5 hour flight time.

I had a brief browse through the latest tweets when Phil was the top trending story the other day; pretty much all of the ones I saw were people congratulating him on his bravery. I suspect many of them were really congratulating themselves but the positive tweets far outweighed the prejudiced ones.

Your point being?

Alex Brooker on The Last Leg talking about overcoming disability when having deformed hands is in no way a barrier to him being a sh*t comedian.

As a simple bumpkin I am delighted by this story. Thanks to this article, my love for Gao is now unfaltering and I will continue to worship at the home-made shrine in my spare room, even if Ralph leaves and we appoint Steve Wigley. Does anyone have Gao’s PayPal address, I wish to make a personal donation?

Who mentioned North Korea and how is it relevant? Nobody claimed Islam had the monopoly on despotic regimes. Perhaps Iran is better for some of its citizens, although I think the women setting themselves on fire might not be so thrilled with it. Your argument is basically akin to running up to a man in the street, kicking him in the nads and saying, "at least you don’t have bone cancer." Is that a coincidence? How come all these regimes are dragging Islam back to the dark ages? How is it the state dragging the religion down? What is the motivation for that? Taking Brunei as an example, what do they gain by introducing the death penalty for gays? Are the Saudis paying them to do that or do they profit in some other way?

Split thread as this seems like it’s own topic.

Fair play Turks, you’ve reeled him in good and proper. Now if you two could just keep it on this thread, that’d be super.

So life in Iran, which is politically opposed to Saudi Arabia and practice a completely different branch of Islam, is generally fine?

No, having Muslim countries where a large percentage of the country is treated as sub-human has that effect. If an entire population grows up thinking gays should be stoned to death, women are sex slaves, foreign nationals are second class servants and you can hang for drawing a cartoon of the wrong person, then they can easily be lead into becoming barbaric murderers with little or no compassion for others. If it weren’t for conflicts in the Middle East, it would be something else. Just look at Charlie Hebdo.

What about Germany, France, Morocco, Egypt, Mali, Indonesia, Australia, Iraq, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nigeria and Burkina Faso?

Without paying to read that article, the headline doesn’t surprise me. The Muslim women I went to school with were generally very academic and one particular individual was top of the class in pretty much everything. Then in our final year of sixth form she went for some work experience/placement scheme and didn’t get it. Basically she had no hobbies and interests aside from going home and studying every day and after 5 minutes of the interview had run out of things to talk about. No idea if that’s a general trend but I’d be interested to see how their sports, art, drama, D of E etc. Compare.

It’s only really Hoj and Bertrand who are regular starters, plus whoever ends up being our first choice RB next season.

If you want to carry this on, it's nice and safe on the Duck Rape thread. Fill your boots.

Man City on the last day of last season.

I wouldn't get your hopes up on that. If those three AND Vest all leave, then we'd need two but now that we've settled on 2 CBs in the team, we really only need 4 in total. The fact that we had 6 on the books in the first place (and none of them were good enough) is somewhat ridiculous.

Personally I think it’s wrong for any parent to impose any religious belief on their children. Extreme or otherwise. Sadly that’s not going to change any time soon and we will continue to live with this sort of nonsense.

Yep. Let's say, worst case scenario, they beat us and also win their 'easier' home games against Palace and Newcastle. That would only put them 4 points above where we are now, with the following fixtures left. Sheff Utd (A) Burnley (A) Chelsea (H) Liverpool (A) Wolves (A) Man Utd (A) Spurs (H) Leicester (H) City (A) Everton (A)

Perhaps the club feel that there are no U18s good enough and that having inadequate players in the centre of the pitch will be to the detriment to everyone else. Or maybe we just fancy the look of this guy and its a no risk 6 month try out before we maybe sign him in summer. The answer certainly isn't that we want to develop other clubs youth players, so there must be some reason for it. I'd give Crocker the benefit of the doubt until I have reason to believe otherwise.

Proper Four Lions stuff that, attacking a chemist.

Decent result for us at Turf Moor, neither team pulling away from us.

Everyone? Well in that case, naming one poster should be a piece of p*ss.

I've never regarded Zlatan as anything other than a complete helmet, no matter how good he is. What's the strongest team of complete helmets we can come up with? Neuer ? - Terry - ? - ? Noble - Keane - Pogba Alli Suarez - Zlatan

Yeah, if you like. Looking at the run in: We don’t have to play Liverpool, Chelsea, Spurs, Leicester, Wolves or Palace. West Ham don’t have to play Sheff U, Brighton, Leicester, Everton, Bournemouth or Palace Watford don’t have to play Villa, Bournemouth, Everton, Spurs, Sheff U or Wolves If you want to think they could get 7 points more from what’s left, you go ahead.

Pessimism I can understand and I'd probably say a cautious 6 points myself. However I think you're massively overestimating Watford and West Ham there. They would both have to win their next five to see us needing wins against Bournemouth and Brighton. Even with 5 points and nothing from Utd, City and (as usual) Goodison, that only sees us needing 4 from Arsenal at home, the two games you mentioned, Watford away and Sheff Utd on the last day. I just can't make a case for us being anywhere near the drop zone.